Color E-Ink screen or normal display? This dual-screen phone offers both.

Phones with E-Ink displays are great for reading, but bad for video playback and gaming. One solution to this problem emerged in the 2010s, as a couple of manufacturers released dual-screen phones with a monochrome E-Ink screen on one side and a conventional display on the other. Now, a nascent manufacturer is reviving this trend.

E-Ink brand Bigme has teased the arrival of a dual-screen smartphone (h/t: Liliputing). It claims this is the world’s first smartphone with both a color E-Ink display and an LCD screen. The teaser image doesn’t give us a look at the dual-screen setup, but I’m assuming the color E-Ink screen is on one side, while the LCD panel is on the other. Check out the image below.

There have been dual-screen phones with E-Ink and conventional displays before, such as the YotaPhone series (see the top of the page) and the Hisense A6. But those devices featured monochrome E-Ink displays, whereas Bigme earns its world-first claim by using a color E-Ink panel.

Bigme hasn’t revealed much else about the phone, but it has taken to Reddit to tease specs. The company posted an image that hints at stylus support, NFC, 5G connectivity, and dual-SIM tech.

In any event, I’m really glad we’re finally seeing another dual-screen phone with both E-Ink and conventional displays. This means that you don’t have to compromise your viewing experience. E-Ink displays are easy on the eyes and exceptionally efficient, but their low refresh rate means they’re usually awful for video playback and gaming. The firm’s recent HiBreak Plus phone offers a 52Hz refresh rate, and that’s considered a high refresh rate for an E-Ink screen. By contrast, other Bigme E-Ink phones offer refresh rates of 21 to 30Hz.

So having both screen types in one device makes a ton of sense, as you can switch between displays based on your current activity. I’m actually surprised we haven’t seen more phones like this in the years since Yota and Hisense released their products. So here’s hoping major brands like Samsung and Xiaomi offer similar dual-screen phones in the near future.